I don’t know about you, other bloggers out there, but there are a couple of things that I find make this whole endeavor so much fun beside the writing and interacting. I have now been blogging for over a year (I am not much into anniversaries, so I just ignored the fact for a while) and there are just some things I want to share. I am curious what cracks you up. And for those readers that don’t blog, this might provide some interesting insight…
For example, when I look at my stats page which shows me my daily, weekly and monthly views, I do get a kick out of the map and list of countries that tells me where my visitors have come from. Over the last year, the vast majority have come from the US (about four times as many as from the next country), followed by Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Australia and South Korea. What is the most fun, though, is spotting visitors from tiny countries, or countries that I care about: like my one visitor (ever) from Botswana, Fiji or the Virgin Islands, or the two visitors from Zimbabwe. The map that is shown is colored according to number of visits. And there is a white corridor that stretches from North Korea through China, through Central Asia, pretty much all of Northern, Central and Western Africa to the South American republics and territories North of Brazil and Colombia. Except for a number of hits from Nigeria and a few in Sierra Leone, Kenya and Cameroon, Africa is practically blank (except for Southern Africa)…which makes me sad.
My visitors Map May 2012 until May 2013
It also shows me the most frequent recent commenters (in order of appearance: Stefano, Tracy, Megan, Anatoli, Jeff and Julian, in case you were wondering!) and the most commented on posts (again from most down: About, The Wine Century Club, Sunday Read: Almaroja Pirita 2007 Arribes, Sunday read: Why you should be drinking cheap wine and Trader Joe’s Espiral Vinho Verde).
Another cool feature of the support tools is that it tells me which blog post has been visited the most. This has to be taken with a grain of salt because by far the most hits are to my front page (five times the following page’s hits), which contains the latest three articles. The counter cannot distinguish which posts are visited on that page, so it just tells me “Homepage”. But behind that, this picture emerges (again, all time records):
- Trader Joe’s Espiral Vinho Verde – my idea of summer wine
- I’m back with a note on U.S. customs duties for wine
- About
- 2009 Epicuro Salice Salentino Riserva
- 2009 Cantina Zaccagnini Montepulciano d’Abruzzo
The first single vineyard Riesling article comes in at spot 19 (sic!), the 2011 St. Urbanshof Ockfener Bockstein Riesling Kabinett. At least some of my winery profiles rank at 8, 13, 14 and 16. That is kind of a bummer, because I was really hoping to be pushing Rieslings more, but it is also a reflection of what people search for in search engines and what leads them to my site. And people do search for wines that are widely available…and these Rieslings are still filling a niche. And I blog about wineries in Germany that have not dominated the market or wine news.
And that brings me to the best (at least funniest) feature for me: I am also told what search terms lead people to my site. Over the last weeks, for example, I have seen the number of hits from search engines spike that contained the words “wine”, “us customs” and ” air travel”. When I searched some of these terms in Google, my blog came up in third position on page one, behind two much older posts. I guess this explains why that article made it to number two in my ranking of most popular post.
The most popular search terms, however, have been these (with variations of the terms):
- vinho verde trader joe’s
- cantina zaccagnini montepulciano d’abruzzo 2009
- the winegetter (YAY!!)
- salice salentino riserva 2009
- how many bottles of wine can i bring to the us
Now, those are not very funny. So what is the funniest about these? It is the singular search hits I get. In one case, a friend of mine played a trick on me and reached my blog via these search terms: “winegetter amazing german man riesling blog”. Naturally I was all excited and plastered these news all over my Facebook site until Nina confided in me it was one of our friends…and there are other hits I just cannot explain to myself: how do you get to my site with the search word “mllongo”, and what does that even mean? Or “where can i buy michigan mcintosh apples”, hell do I know? Or ‘why are cotes du rhone so earthy”. Great question, but I am definitely not the one who could explain that…
But sometimes, my posts also hit the nail on the head, like today, when someone searched for “martini bianco with lemon on ice images”. If you remember, my post on Martini Bianco contained a photo of exactly that drink that I had taken…dang, and now I want one really badly.
I still love the front end of my blog, and it is what keeps me writing. But I do enjoy those behind the scene facts I am given. Add in the growing number of visitors in general, and I feel like I am on a pretty good trajectory.
the winegetter 